Joseph J. Ellis

by American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

  First there was the bond of mutual admiration and jocular courting. Abigail asked Jefferson to purchase several small replicas of classical beauty. Jefferson responded: “With respect to the figures I could only find three of those you named, matched in size. These were Minerva, Diana, and Apollo. I was obliged to add a fourth, unguided by your choice. They offered me a fine Venus; but I thought it out of taste to have two at table at the same time.” Or Abigail requested Jefferson to survey the Parisian shops for black lace and evening shoes, apologizing at the end for “troubling you with such trifling matters,” which was “a little like putting Hercules to the distaff.”18

  Then there was the running joke about the inherent depravity of the English monarch and nation. Jefferson reported “a blind story here of somebody attempting to assassinate your king [i.e., George III]. No man upon earth has my prayers for his continuance in life more sincerely than him. He is truly the American Messias… .” Abigail observed that all stories originating in the English newspapers were lies: “The account is as false—if it was not too rough a term for a Lady to use, I would say false as Hell, but I would substitute one not less expressive and say false as English.” Jefferson asked her if there was anything he could do, in his official capacity, to improve English manners. Abigail informed him that “there is a want of many French commodities, Good Sense, Good Nature, Political Wisdom and benevolence”; Jefferson would “render essential service to his Britanick Majesty if he would permit Cargoes of this kind to be exported into this kingdom.”19

  Finally there was the matter of Jefferson’s parental responsibilities. The Adamses were still in Paris when Jefferson received word that Lucy, his youngest child and the daughter whose birth had led to Martha’s fatal illness, had herself died of whooping cough back in Virginia. Abigail helped console Jefferson—he went into a deep despondency—and they developed a special affinity as parents. When her own daughter, Nabby, announced her intention to marry Colonel Stephen Smith, the personal secretary to husband John, Abigail proposed a unique arrangement to Jefferson: “Now I have been thinking of an exchange with you Sir. Suppose you give me Miss Jefferson [Patsy], and in some [fu]ture day take a Son [her grandson] in lieu of her. I am for Strengthening [the] federal union.”20 But most of Abigail’s maternal advice concerned Jefferson’s middle daughter, Maria, called Polly. Jefferson had left her with relatives back in Virginia—she was only four years old—and in part because of Abigail’s prodding, he decided to risk the Atlantic voyage and have her sent over to Paris to consolidate his family. Abigail was at the wharf in London when Polly arrived and immediately began to initiate Jefferson in the time-honored Adams tradition of brutal honesty.

  Polly herself was an absolute charmer. “I never saw so intelligent a countenance in a child before,” Abigail wrote, “and the pleasure she has given me is an ample compensation for any little services I have been able to render her.” But Jefferson needed to face his failures as a father: “I show her your picture. She says she cannot know it, how could she when she could not know you.” When Jefferson wrote to say that official duties prevented him from crossing the Channel to fetch Polly, so he was sending Petit, his chief household servant, Abigail felt obliged to insist that Jefferson contemplate Polly’s reaction to this news: “Tho she says she does not remember you, yet she has been taught to consider you with affection and fondness, and depended upon your coming for her. She told me this morning, that as she had left all her friends in virginia to come over the ocean to see you, she did think you would have taken the pains to have come here for her, and not have sent a man [Petit] whom she cannot understand. I express her own words.”21 As if this were not enough, Abigail wondered out loud how a man who professed to feel such affection for his children could then commit them to the care of Catholic nuns. The decision to place Patsy in the convent at Panthemont had always mystified her. Now that Polly had finally joined her father, “I hope that she will not lose her fine spirits within the walls of a convent too, to which I own I have many, perhaps false prejudices.”22

  Jefferson’s relationship with John Adams also mingled deep and mutual affection with a level of bracing honesty from the Adams side that frequently forced Jefferson to face the persistent gap between his ideals and the messier realities of the real world. Jefferson, for his part, provided Adams with an extremely thoughtful and hardworking partner in the business of representing America’s interest in Europe. Abigail claimed that Jefferson was “the only person with whom my Companion could associate with perfect freedom, and unreserve… .” Taken together, the two men were the proverbial opposites that attracted: the stout, candid-to-a-fault New Englander with the effusive temperament and the pugilistic disposition, and the lean, ever-elusive Virginian with the glacial exterior and almost eerie serenity. Each man seemed to sense in the other the compensating qualities missing in his own personality. In the amiable atmosphere created by Abigail at Auteuil, they found the leisured conditions that allowed them to appreciate the attractiveness of their respective other sides, “completing” each other, if you will, and creating a truly formidable diplomatic team in the process.23

  As distinctive products of the war for independence, they shared a bottomless commitment to the prospects for an independent American nation and an equally limitless mistrust of English policy toward its former colonies. Jefferson claimed that he had “an infallible rule for deciding what that nation [England] would do on every occasion.” It was a simple rule—namely, “to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do… .” He claimed that, by adopting this formula, he “was never deceived.” Adams concurred completely. “If John Bull don’t see… a Thing at first,” he observed to Jefferson, “You know it is a rule with him ever afterwards to swear that it don’t exist, even when he does both see it and feel it.” Adams believed that the loss of the war with America, and with it a substantial portion of their overseas empire, had rendered most Englishmen incapable of fair-mindedness toward their former colonies. “They care no more for us,” he concluded, “than they do about the Seminole Indians.” There was even a dramatic, almost melodramatic moment, when their mutual Anglophobia was sealed in a symbolic blood oath. When Jefferson visited Adams in England in the spring of 1786, the two former revolutionaries were presented at court and George III ostentatiously turned his back on them both. Neither man ever forgot the insult or the friend standing next to him when it happened.24

  In addition to their mutual animosities toward England and their common sense of indignation at the insufferable arrogance of the king, the friendship worked because Jefferson deferred to Adams. After all, Adams was his senior and had been negotiating with the French and English for five years. Jefferson’s deferential pattern began as soon as he arrived in France: “What would you think of the enclosed Draught to be proposed to the courts of London and Versailles?” Jefferson inquired. “I know it goes beyond our powers; and beyond the powers of Congress too. But it is so evidently for the good of the states that I should not be afraid to risk myself on it if you are of the same opinion.” The proposal envisioned reciprocal rights for citizens of all nations, complete freedom of trade and a reformed system of international law. Yes, Adams replied, it was a “beau ideal” proposal, but unfortunately it was also completely irrelevant to the current, and cutthroat, European context: “We must not, my Friend, be the Bubbles of our own Liberal Sentiments. If we cannot obtain reciprocal Liberality, We must adopt reciprocal Prohibitions, Exclusions, Monopolies, and Imposts. Our offers have been fair, more than fair. If they are rejected, we must not be Dupes.”25

  The same pattern repeated itself in the dialogue over American policy toward the vexing problem of the Barbary pirates. Several Muslim countries along the North African coast had established the tradition of plundering the ships of European and American merchants in the western Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, capturing the crews and then demanding ransom from the respective governments for their
release. In a joint message to their superiors in Congress, Adams and Jefferson described the audacity of these terrorist attacks, pirates leaping onto defenseless ships with daggers clenched in their teeth. They had asked the ambassador from Tripoli, Adams and Jefferson explained, on what grounds these outrageous acts of unbridled savagery could be justified: “The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners… .”26 Jefferson found such unmitigated blackmail beyond his comprehension and beyond any recognized principle of law or justice. He initially proposed that the United States refuse to pay ransoms and instead dispatch a naval force to the Mediterranean to teach these outlaws of the sea a lesson. Later he supplemented his proposal with a comprehensive scheme whereby the United States would organize an international task force comprised of all European nations whose shipping was being victimized. “Justice and Honor favor this course,” he exclaimed to Adams, and it would probably cost less in the long run to boot.27

  Adams agreed that it was impossible to negotiate with the Barbary pirates; as he put it, “Avarice and Fear are the only Agents at Algiers… .” But Jefferson’s accounting, Adams observed, grossly underestimated the cost. It would require at least £500,000 annually to sustain a naval force in the region. The Congress would never authorize such a sum. And the United States had nothing in the way of a navy to send over anyway. “From these Premises,” he apprised Jefferson, “I conclude it to be wisest for us to negotiate and pay the necessary Sum, without loss of Time… .” Adams insisted that Jefferson’s solution, while bold and wholly honorable in its own terms, was an idea whose time had not come. “Congress will never, or at least not for years, take any such Resolution,” he reminded Jefferson, “and in the mean time our Trade and Honour suffers beyond Calculation. We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.” Jefferson remained unconvinced but agreed that Adams’s opinion should be the basis for the official American position: “You make the result differently from what I do,” he wrote to Adams in London, but “it is of no consequence; as I have nothing to say in the decision.”28

  It is possible to detect in Jefferson an early undertone of resentment toward Adams’s realism, which consistently undercut his own grander vision. Jefferson even tried to go over Adams’s head by having his own proposal for an international naval force presented to Congress by a third party, a ploy that failed when Congress rejected the scheme outright, as Adams had predicted it would. If one were looking for early signs of the eventual clash between these longtime colleagues, one could find them in embryo here. But Jefferson’s momentary duplicities were more than overbalanced by his genuine admiration for Adams. The admiration went even deeper, to the recognition that Adams possessed a mental toughness, a capacity to flourish in the midst of innuendo and invective and high-stakes decisions. “Indeed the man must be a rock,” Jefferson wrote to Abigail, “who can stand all this.” He went on to confess his own sense of inadequacy in embattled situations and to hold up Adams as a mentor: “I do not love difficulties. I am fond of quiet, willing to do my duty, but irritable by slander, and apt to be forced by it from my post. These are weaknesses from which reason and your counsels will preserve Mr. adams.”29

  DIPLOMATIC FUTILITIES

  THERE WAS OF course a third American minister in France, more famous by far than the other two. Benjamin Franklin had been representing American interests abroad longer than any other diplomat, and his reputation in France had reached epic proportions. He was the visible embodiment of American values in their most seductively simple form. When Franklin and Voltaire had embraced before the multitudes of Paris, it created a sensation in the French press, the union of the two greatest champions of human enlightenment in history’s most enlightened century. Jefferson himself regarded Franklin as second only to Washington as the greatest American of the revolutionary generation, going so far as to observe that there was a discernible gap between Franklin and the next tier of American revolutionary heroes, a group in which he included Adams but modestly excluded himself.30

  Unofficial rumors had it that Jefferson had been appointed Franklin’s eventual replacement. (Franklin, who was nearing eighty, had let it be known that he wished to return to America in the near future.) When Jefferson was presented to the French court soon after his arrival, legend has it that Vergennes, the French foreign minister, asked him if he was intended to serve as Franklin’s replacement, to which Jefferson allegedly replied: “No one can replace him, Sir; I am only his successor.” Adams, for his part, was far from saddened to see Franklin leave. The two men had quarreled incessantly throughout the negotiations that produced the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the war, Adams contending that Franklin left the bulk of the work for him, shared American negotiating secrets too freely with Vergennes and too often mistook flirtatious evenings with admiring French ladies for his main diplomatic duties. Franklin in turn regarded Adams as the kind of neurotic Yankee who gave hard work a bad name and who failed to appreciate the benefits of informal associations with France’s salon society, especially the sort of harmless flirtations of an old man with the lovely and once-lovely women who helped shape the values of Parisian culture. No one, not even Jefferson, could turn a phrase as deftly as Franklin; his characterization of Adams became famous in its own day, then with posterity, as the ultimate one-sentence evisceration: “Always an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.”31

  For the brief time that they were together as a ministerial team, Jefferson served as a valuable buffer between the two senior members, both of whom found him likable and dedicated. Indeed, it is possible to argue, without much fear of contradiction, that during the nine months Adams, Franklin and Jefferson represented American interests in France the United States enjoyed the greatest assemblage of sheer intellectual talent in the whole subsequent history of American diplomacy. Their chief problem, then, was hardly a lack of wisdom or skill; it was simply that there was very little for them to accomplish.

  When all was said and done, there were very few European countries with much interest in signing treaties of amity and commerce with the recently established American republic. Franklin possessed the most exquisite sense of timing of any member of the revolutionary era; his departure in the summer of 1785 signaled the end of prospects for the American cause in Europe. (He arrived back in Philadelphia in plenty of time to participate in the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention.) Adams complained that there was little for him to do in Paris or London. He spent the bulk of his time composing a massive three-volume study of political theory entitled A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States. Although Jefferson was fully engaged by routine diplomatic duties throughout his years in France, the strategic situation in which fate and the American Congress had placed him virtually precluded any significant foreign policy achievements on his watch.

  Although there were, in fact, several overlapping layers of insurmountable difficulty, the chief problem lay back in Philadelphia. To put it most concisely, the federal Congress created under the Articles of Confederation lacked sufficient authority to oversee American foreign policy. A typical letter from John Jay, who had responsibility for foreign affairs, reported the chronic condition of gridlock. “It has happened from various Circumstances,” Jay wrote to Jefferson, “that several Reports on foreign Affairs still lay before Congress undecided upon. The want of an adequate Representation for long Intervals… has occasioned Delays and Omissions which however unavoidable are much to be regretted.” Jefferson was particularly incensed when the Congress dismissed his plan for a naval force to destroy the Barbary pirates as impossibly expensive. “It will be said,” he wrote to Monroe, “there is no money in the treasury. There never will be mo
ney in the treasury till the confederacy shows its teeth. The states must see the rod.” But Madison informed him that the will to pass revenue bills was simply nonexistent. The current revenue in the treasury amounted to less than $400,000, which was not enough to pay off old debts, much less take on new ones. Madison agreed that it was a lamentable situation that would “confirm… all the world in the belief that we are not to be respected, nor apprehended as a nation in matters of Commerce.” The outstanding debt to France particularly grated on Jefferson, since he was constantly besieged by French veterans of the American Revolution for the back pay owed them. But apart from shaking his head in a gesture of consolation and disbelief, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.32

  Then there was the intractable problem of English arrogance. David Hartley, an English diplomat more disposed toward America than his colleagues, put the matter squarely to Jefferson: “An English proverb says Losers have a right to complain,” wrote Hartley. “After a storm the waves will continue to roll for some time.” In short, having lost half its empire in a long and unsuccessful war, England was not about to render one iota of economic assistance to its former colonies. During his visit with Adams in London in the spring of 1786 Jefferson confirmed this prevailing attitude: “With this nation nothing is done; and it is now decided that they intend to do nothing with us. The king is against a change of measures; his ministers are against it… ; and the merchants and people are against it. They sufficiently value our commerce; but they are quite persuaded they shall enjoy it on their own terms.” Sadly enough, English presumption was proving correct, since the British continued to control more than 80 percent of America’s foreign trade. Why should they negotiate new commercial treaties with the Americans when they already enjoyed a monopoly on their own terms? To make matters worse, the English were fond of raising awkward questions about the power of American diplomats to negotiate on behalf of the United States, asking rhetorically and mischievously if the federal government actually possessed sovereign power over the respective states. Meanwhile the English press kept up a steady stream of anti-American sentiment, suggesting that the former colonies were in a condition of near anarchy. (Jefferson was especially amused by false reports in the London papers that Franklin had either been captured by Algerian pirates on his return voyage or had been stoned by mobs upon landing in Philadelphia.) The dominant opinion among the English aristocracy in their private clubs, Jefferson observed cynically, was that America was poised to petition for readmission into the British Empire. One could hardly expect any cooperation from this quarter.33